Quaint Korea

Louise Jordan Miln's Quaint Korea offers a vivid late-19th-century portrait of a country Western readers scarcely knew, seen through the alert, opinionated eye of a traveler who trusts firsthand observation over theory. In a series of lively sketches, she leads readers through Korean customs, homes, women's lives, architecture, art, religion, history, and daily amusements, capturing a nation where tradition and change meet in striking ways. Miln urges visitors to understand Korea by watching its people at work and at rest: their food, roadside rest-houses, heated floors, sign-posts, poetry, painting, and scholarship. She explores a society shaped by education and competitive examinations, where learning confers status even amid possible corruption. Her reflections also touch on larger human wrongs and the possibility of moral awakening. The book's domestic and cultural portraits are especially rich, from poor mud-and-leaf dwellings to paper-lined interiors and modest drawing-rooms of low tables, cushions, and carefully chosen objects. Throughout, Miln presents Korea as a distinctive, highly cultured land, marked by foreign influences yet unmistakably its own, with war, women's labor, and the country's uncertain future lingering at the edge of view. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.